Rock
by herworship429
Summary: Tony finally reconciles with a ghost.


As much as I delight diving into Tony's daddy issues, I'm not usually so... well, cheesy about it. But my muse sort of took over and I couldn't write anything else until this came into being. Maybe you'll like it.

This is MCU, by the way, and I don't know much of anything about little-kid Tony, or Howard as a father, so maybe it's a little OOC? Not sure. I would assume the family sometimes took vacations, and that they might have ended up in Ireland. I also apologize if my mental image of the Irish coast is totally off... sadly never been there.

The song, "the Rock", is from an old Disney Channel show (that the young'uns may or may not remember) called So Weird... the Gaelic at the end could be totally misspelled, if so I apologize. The song was preformed by Mackenzie Phillips in the show, but I have no idea who actually wrote it. I guess Disney owns it? Who knows... well, I guess someone does, but it's not me.

Coincidentally, I suppose Disney owns Tony and Howard and Pepper and Yinsen too. And since I'm not Disney, I'm just borrowing them.

* * *

_ The Rock fought my spirit, the Rock fed my anger,_

_ The Rock broke my heart like the waves of the sea._

They were fighting again; it was about him, of course. His mom and dad only ever fought about him.

"This is the third school in as many years," Dad was shouting, not bothering to lower his voice so Tony wouldn't hear, and while he couldn't make out her responses at first, now Mom had joined him, "What is wrong with that boy?"

"Nothing that isn't just as wrong with you," she shot back. Tony could hear the glare in her voice; he could picture here standing with her fisted hands on her hips, feet planted apart, as if she was charging into battle.

"He can't keep doing this!"

"What? Being brilliant? It's not something that he can help, Howard, you should well know that!"

"And being a troublemaker?"

"Well, you should know something about that too," her voice softened, "Howard, it's hard for him, can't you see that? How can he fit in when he's so far ahead of the rest of them? When he's got 'Stark' at the end of his name?"

"I managed it just fine, didn't I?"

Tony stood up abruptly and charged down the stairs; he ran right into his father, but he twisted out of his grip and kept running. Out the back door of the beach house they had rented for the summer, down a grassy hill, towards the rocky cliffs. He heard them both calling to him to stop, to come back, but he wouldn't; not while his face was wet with tears that would only bring disappointment to Howard's, not while he was sobbing so hard that he could barely breathe and run at the same time. He ducked into a stand of trees and kept running, finally breaking through the edge of the forest and onto the edge of a stone cliff that towered over a narrow, rocky beach. There was a staircase, a path hewn into the rock that led down to the sea, and as he carefully made his way down it, the tears slowed to a halt.

He had tried, at his last school; he really had. He had tried to make friends, but even at a private boarding school for the children of the country's wealthiest, he stood out. He was too smart for the cool kids, too cool for the smart kids, too rich for the charity cases who were there on scholarship because it was supposed to have the best junior high science programs in the country. The best of his teachers looked at him as if he was some specimen to be studied, and the worst of them picked him out as a troublemaker, a question-asker, a pot-stirrer that had to be broken before he realized the menace he could be to their carefully-constructed tower of rules and regulations. And when they were called to the headmaster's office to explain their son's "extreme behavior" (all he'd done was blow up a toilet in the boy's dormitory… and _maybe_ accidentally set the chemistry lab on fire, but that had only happened twice. Well, and there was that time he hotwired Dr. Fitzgerald's car and taken it for a quick spin around the parking lot, but he hadn't crashed it or anything, and the old bat wouldn't have even known if Eddie Hollis hadn't ratted him out)… well, he understood why his parents weren't happy with him, but he couldn't do anything about it. He had already tried that.

He had tried everything he could think of to be what Howard wanted him to be, but he couldn't keep up with the expectations that changed on a whim every time the wind blew. "Be as smart as me" was the mandate one day, "stop being such a smartass" was the next; "be who you are and don't let anyone change you" gave way to "stop causing so much trouble" before he could even process what his father meant by any of it. It was too much for a thirteen year old boy to handle, even one as unique and intelligent as Tony was. And even on those rare occasions when he managed to do exactly what Howard wanted, when he managed to be the perfect son, his father couldn't even acknowledge it; there was never a "good job, son", even when he did something exactly right. And if he couldn't even manage that, Tony supposed an "I love you, son" was out of the question. Howard didn't even seem to _like_ him all that much.

No, the tears were long gone; now, he wandered down the strip of sand, kicking furiously at rocks and shells. He saw a discarded glass bottle, one of a small pile that had probably been left behind by some local's partying the night before; he seized it and glared down through the neck and through the bottom to the sand stained green by the glass, the pit of his stomach filling up with anger. How the hell was he supposed to live up to Howard's expectations if he couldn't even explain properly to Tony what he wanted? How the hell was he supposed to make that man happy when Howard couldn't even tell him how to go about doing it? Staring down into the bottle, he made a promise then and there, that when he grew up, he wouldn't become Howard; he wouldn't ask unreasonable things of the people around him, he would do his best to explain himself coherently, he wouldn't make all of his father's mistakes. And if he ever had children of his own, they would know without a doubt that he loved them, that he was proud of them no matter what choices they made, and that he would never, ever let them down. Staring down into the bottle, he willed the scared, helpless little boy into it; he willed in the tears and the pain, willed all of his hurt feelings down into the bottom of the bottle. When all that was left was anger, he covered the opening with his hand.

He took the bottle back to the house with him and hid it in his room. Late that night, after his parents had gone to sleep, he found an old wine cork in a kitchen drawer and used his tools to whittle it down to the right size. When he could get it to fit into the mouth of the bottle, he found a candle, a flashlight and a book of matches and went outside. He followed the path through the woods and down the cliff. A dim light glowed down the beach, and Tony could hear people laughing and music playing; perhaps the revelers were back. He stayed in the dark, well clear of them, and knelt down in the wet sand with the bottle planted in front of him. Holding the flashlight in his mouth so his hands were free, he wedged the cork into it and lit the candle, carefully dripping bright red wax all around the edge of the bottle's mouth and over the top of the cork. He sprinkled some sand into the wax before it dried, and stuck a seashell that was laying nearby onto the very top. More wax went over the shell, and then he waited for sunrise.

The wax was dry by the time the first rays of sunlight stabbed at his face and woke him up; he was soaking wet and covered in sand, and his flashlight had apparently been swept out to sea, because it was nowhere to be found, but the bottle was still clutched tightly in his left hand. He got up from the place he'd wedged himself in between boulders at the bottom of the cliff and walked out into the sea until the water was crashing into his knees. He checked his wax seal again, and then he looked out into the rising sun.

He threw the bottle as hard as he could, and watched it arc up and crash into the water with a wet _thunk_. It bobbed back to the surface and spun onto its side. He watched it float in and out with the waves, until he could no longer make it out on the horizon. Then he went back up the stairs in the cliff, back to the house, where he found his mother in a panic because she had gotten up and found his bed empty.

"Where were you, Anthony?! We were worried sick, your father went into town to get the police, and-"

"I'm fine, Mom," Tony replied calmly and evenly, "There was something I had to do."

* * *

_I tried hard to fight, but it still grew inside me,_

_ This island, my Ireland, the Rock is in me…_

Twenty years later, Tony Stark woke up in a cave in Afghanistan, and realized he had broken the promise he had made to himself on that beach in Ireland all those years ago. That wasn't his first thought, of course; his first thought was something along the lines of "what the hell happened? Why am I in a cave? Where's Rhodey? And why is there a car battery wired to my chest?"

But after Yinsen had made an appearance, after he introduced himself and explained what had happened, after he told him about the conference where they had met that Tony didn't remember at all, after all of that, he realized that it had happened. Somewhere along the way, Tony had forgotten the bottle and the promise, and done precisely what he had vowed he would never do.

He'd become Howard.

"Something is troubling you," Yinsen asked, adjusting his glasses with one finger while he gathered up the scattered dice with his other hand.

"Yeah," Tony continued to stare at the board, "I just realized I've turned into my father."

Yinsen laughed, "All men become their fathers. It is the way of the world. God having a little laugh at our expense."

"The last person I want to be is my father," Tony shook his head and took the dice.

"Why?"

"Because he was a self-centered jackass the world held up as a hero. Because I could never do anything right, because he could never decide what he wanted from me, because he made me feel unwanted and inadequate. He was cold and unforgiving. He was unmovable, he was… he was_ stone_. I don't know if he ever loved me, or if I was just an experiment that didn't quite pan out, but he sure as hell didn't want me around."

Yinsen looked up from the game board, a pensive expression on his face, "Even stones can be moved, given the right impetus. Society has taught men that they must be unemotional, that they must not cry, or fear, or show love too quickly. This does not mean that he did not love you."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Because_ I_ am a father," Yinsen replied dismissively, a grin alighting his face, "And I have won. Again."

* * *

_The Rock forged my spirit, the Rock was my anchor,_

_ The Rock held me fast through the storms of my youth._

"Tony?"

He looked up from the notebook he had been pouring through, into the face of his father; it was trapped in the screen, but nevertheless, Howard was addressing him. _This takes "special guest appearance from the Great Beyond" to new heights of weird…_

He listened for five minutes, before the reel ended. But Howard's final words echoed in his head.

"I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day, you _will_ figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What remains is this simple truth: what is, and will always be, my greatest creation… is _you_."

_Well, what do you know?_ He thought as he set aside the notebook and took the reel of film off of the projector. Rummaging around in the box, he noticed one more reel of film; the date stamp made it much newer than the first one. In fact… that was the year of their trip to Ireland. That was the year he threw the bottle in the sea.

He hesitated, but finally wound the film onto the projector. His finger hovered over the 'on' switch for a long moment. He finally hit it before he could change his mind.

The screen flickered to life once more, and there was Howard, looking older but still so much the same; he was in the studio where he had filmed the "city of the future" shtick years before, still standing in front of the same model, fidgeting with the cuff of his jacket, and looking about as awkward as Tony did whenever he was forced to make an apology.

"Tony, I… I've left this for you, because you're too young to understand right now. But it isn't just this," he gestured to the model behind him, "You're angry with me now. And I understand why. But I need to… I need to apologize. Explain. I can't seem to do that to you directly. I don't imagine that will change much. But I am sorry. I'm sorry that I've made you feel that you're not good enough. I'm sorry that I can't tell you that I'm proud of you.

"I wanted to push you to greatness, but… I pushed you away instead. For that, I will never forgive myself. I hope that I'll never need to show this to you. I hope that one day, I'll be able to tell you this myself, in person. I hope that I will find the courage to ask for your forgiveness, and I hope that you'll have the grace to accept it. I hope more than anything that one day, it will be like working on the hot rod all of the time," he was smiling, but the smile turned sad all of the sudden, and he glanced at the ceiling, as if he was afraid someone was listening, watching him, "But that may not happen."

A thought struck Tony; suddenly, he wondered how long Obediah had been gunning for sole control over Stark Industries. He wondered how much of an accident his parents' deaths really were. The idea chilled him to the core, but then he remembered that Stane was dead, his plans had been foiled, he was gone and Pepper was safe… Howard began speaking once more, returning Tony's attention to the screen. He could solve the riddle of the car accident some other time; he had more important issues on his mind at the moment.

"I don't know what the future holds, but I do know a few things. You should know them too. Know that I am so proud of all that you've accomplished, with or without my help. Know that you are my legacy; everything I am and _so_ much more. Know that you are my son, my greatest creation, and even if I never show it… I love you, son."

Howard smiled hesitantly and then the screen was filled with his suit as he tried to turn the camera off. Tony couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped him at the nearly thirty seconds of cursing and complaining that followed before the reel ended.

So. Yinsen had been right after all; Howard _did_ have a heart. Of course, now that he was seriously thinking on the matter, it occurred to Tony that for all that he had hated his father, resented him, cursed his memory… it was precisely that memory that kept him from breaking. Through all the storms he had weathered in his life, it had been the memory of Howard that kept him from being swept away. The knowledge that Howard would never give up, and he would never let Tony live it down if he didn't do the same… it had kept him going through the worst of moments.

So he didn't give up. He evaded the SHIELD agents who had been left to babysit him, and drove to the office; he weathered Pepper's stony stare and clipped tone. _If Howard can apologize after all these years, I can apologize to Pepper_, he told himself when he wanted to turn tail and run. He fought through the hurt at her words, and it was in the middle of all of that when he noticed the old model, the same one his father had been leaning on, standing in front of in the footage…

_What if…_ Tony thought, staring at the gold plague on the side of the model with newfound understanding, _What if he meant it _literally_?_

It was the only lead he had, and he had to get the old stuff out of his-Pepper's-office anyway, so he drafted a couple of office interns to help him haul the model down to his convertible.

Once it was put together and scanned, he spent a good half-an-hour just staring at it. When it finally hit him, the answer was so clever and elegant and simple…

"Dead for twenty years… still taking me to school."

For the first time in a very long time, the thought of his father brought a genuine smile to Tony Stark's face.

"And what do you know?" he told Pepper later as they strolled down the beach near Coney Island, barefoot in the surf, her arm slipped through his, "Dad saved the day."

"Well, _you_ did," she pointed out with a smile, "With Howard's assistance."

"I knew there was a reason I liked you," he laughed. Suddenly she stopped and let go of his arm.

"Look at this," she bent down and fished something out of the sand, "A message in a bottle… that's strange. No message."

He stared at her as she held up the bottle, trying to see inside it, looking for the scrap of paper that should have been there. Except, he recognized the weathered green glass, even crusted with barnacles and dirt; the wax seal was more or less intact, the shell he'd shoved into the cooling wax still stuck to the top of the cork. He took it from his perplexed girlfriend, who had fallen silent at the look on his face.

"What is it?" she asked, brow furrowed.

"Mine," he finally choked out, "It was mine. I threw it into the Atlantic twenty years ago."

"You forgot to put the note in it," she pointed out with a nervous chuckle. He appreciated that she didn't ask why he was so certain it was the same bottle.

"I didn't need a note," he ran a fingernail through the wax and worked the cork free of the barnacles and sea sludge it had collected. It came out with a _pop_, and Tony stared down into the bottle, where an angry little boy had once locked away his heart and thrown it into the sea.

He smiled and looked up at the sky. When he spoke, it was a whisper that not even Pepper could hear. But he knew, somehow, in his bones, in his _heart,_ that Howard heard him.

"Thanks, Dad."

_ Now you'll never die, 'cause you live on inside me,_

_ An oile__án seo Moh-Eireann féin Li-li-li…_

* * *

Reviews are nice, if you are so inclined.


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